This blog has been set up to track a trading account focused on commodity futures and etf options. The unlimited profit ability with the capped risk is the appeal.

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

New Addition To Worst Trades Ever

There had to be a full moon and there must have been a ladder walked under, a cat crossing the path, and an umbrella opened in the room. Because there is no other explanation for the mistake made on Friday.

It started with the UUP trade hitting the Code Red price and the ending of that trade happening. Hey, it happens. It is no big deal. The closing of this trade was the best part of the trading day. But what happened next was right out of crazyville.

As I was posting results on the Stocktwits account, it was noticed that Apple was getting a lot of attention for losing so much that day. It was after 2:30 Central Time. Why was Apple getting hammered so much? The price of the stock was around $576 at the time. A look at the options opened up a great opportunity; or so was thought. It showed the Nov 9, $580 calls selling for $0.03! Immediately 10 contracts were bought. The trade happened with less than 2 minutes remaining in the trading day. Major profits were on the way. But why were the options so cheap? The answer came on Sunday.

Doing research on Sunday revealed the truth. As the Optionsxpress account details page was opened, the Apple options were not in the positions section of the page. Where did they go? The quick answer is that they had expired. The options that were bought expired on November 2nd, not November 9th, as previously thought. Yes, you read correctly. Out of the money options were bought and expired within 2 minutes. The silver lining in this is that capital used for the trade did not surpass limits. At least something worked in the trade!

Here is the take away. Take your time to review your trade. Optionsxpress even has a preview trade before execution of the trade. It was completely ignored due to the time restriction. MISTAKE, MISTAKE, MISTAKE.